Q3 (September to December) is a great quarter for commerce in India, with the festive season resulting in an increase in shopping. This is evident in Network18’s results, which reported a 29.25% increase in e-commerce revenues to Rs 84.4 crore in Q3-FY13, in comparison with Q2-FY13, and an impressive 191% increase from Rs 29 crore reported for the same quarter last year. It’s not clear if this is the combined revenue of HomeShop18 and BookMyShow, since there is no break up for digital commerce revenues provided for the quarter. Network18 has said that Bookmyshow.com reported a high growth quarter, doubling year on year in terms of revenues. For HomeShop18, revenues grew at over 325% over the corresponding quarter last year: the company says that their margins are looking better, and the TV business is now generating operating profits.

Advertisement

The group has reported revenues of Rs 119.6 crore from its combined digital and e-commerce operations for the quarter, in comparison with Rs 98.2 crore revenues it reported the previous quarter, and Rs 58.5 crore for the corresponding quarter last year.

Operating loss for the segment, which includes Web18, Homeshop18 and Newswire18, decreased 16.98% to Rs 31.3 crore from Rs 37.7 crore in the previous quarter, and 2.8% down from Rs 32.2 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. The operating margin remained negative at -26% as compared to -38% in the previous quarter and -55% in the corresponding quarter last year.

Note that Network18 offloaded its entire stake in Newswire18 to Samara Capital last quarter, for Rs 90 Crore, so we’re not certain if these results are directly comparable.

HomeShop18 had reported revenues of Rs. 89.6 crores for the year ended March 31, 2012 (FY12), up 26% from Rs 71.4 crore in FY11, while BookMyShow had reported revenues of Rs 29.47 crore for the year ended 31st March 2012 (FY12), up 83% from Rs 16.09 crore in FY11.

Note: digital content and commerce revenues for Q2-FY12 have not been made public yet.

Digital Content Revenues

Network18’s digital content division reported revenues of Rs 22.4 crores during the quarter, up 9.8% from Rs 20.4 crore reported last quarter, and 20.43% up from Rs 18.6 crore reported in the same quarter last year. Note that this revenue includes revenues generated from its digital properties including moneycontrol.com, in.com, ibnlive.com and firstpost.com.

Moneycontrol.com reported 14.9 million Unique Visitors in December 2012 as per Comscore World Report, Network18 has said. The company had revealed in August that it had recorded over 30.8 million unique visits across all their sites and mobile apps for the year ending December 2011, citing Comscore metrics.